Years ago I read Gavin DeBeccker’s ” The Gift of Fear” and then bought numerous copies for all my team and talked about the thesis every week for a couple of years. Yesterday I was at a screening of the “Shorty Awards” and had a discussion with someone who I knew of but didn’t know. Turned out she has started a personal safety business based in DeBecker’s work.
“Like every creature on earth, we have an extraordinary defense resource: We don’t have the sharpest claws and strongest jaws–but we do have the biggest brains, and intuition is the most impressive process of these brains. It might be hard to accept its importance because intuition is often described as emotional, unreasonable, or inexplicable. Husbands chide their wives about “feminine intuition” and don’t take it seriously. If intuition is used by a woman to explain some choice she made or a concern she can’t let go of, men roll their eyes and write it off. We much prefer logic, the grounded, explainable, unemotional thought process that ends in a supportable conclusion. In fact, Americans worship logic, even when it’s wrong, and deny intuition, even when it’s right. Men, of course, have their own version of intuition, not so light and inconsequential, they tell themselves, as that feminine stuff. Theirs is more viscerally named a “gut feeling,” but whatever name we use, it isn’t just a feeling. It is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical in the natural order than the most fantastic computer calculation. It is our most complex cognitive process and, at the same time, the simplest.”
I appreciate the chance meeting and conversation that reminded me of the importance of believing my gut and not letting socialization and political correctness put me in harm’s way.
Make Today Remarkable, by Cherishing the Gift of Fear,
B
Make It Your Problem 